Hitchhiker’s Guide to Analytics — Ford Prefect
The hoopiest frood researching the galaxy
Today, we’re going to meet a really hoopy frood who is not from Guilford, as he usually claims, but from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse.
This intrepid researcher is very clever but also very lazy. He skimped a bit on his preliminary research before coming to Earth, leading him to believe the name Ford Prefect would be nicely inconspicuous.
Ford did spend most of his 15 years on Earth pretending to be an out of work actor, which is fairly plausible. And he managed to blend in with the locals, aside from his habit of gate-crashing university parties and making fun of any astrophysicists he could find.
His original name is lost to time, anyway. His father named him in the proud Praxibetel tongue after fleeing the Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster that destroyed all life on Betelgeuse Seven.
No one was ever able to satisfactorily explain what a Hrung is, nor why it chose to collapse on Betelgeuse particularly.
Ford never learned to pronounce his original name, and his father died of shame, which is still a terminal disease in some parts of the galaxy.
Ford’s classmates nicknamed him Ix, which loosely translates to “boy who is not able to satisfactorily explain what a Hrung is, nor why it should choose to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven.”
None of that matters.
What matters is this: Ford is a researcher for that wholly remarkable book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Problem Solving
Ford is brilliant at coming up with unexpected solutions to difficult problems, especially when they interfere with his, say, getting a drink or making his way off a planet about to be demolished by the Vogons.
Case in point: Arthur Dent was blocking bulldozers because Mr Prosser wanted to knock down his cottage to make way for a bypass. Ford wanted to take Arthur to the pub, have a few beers, and get off this rock while he still could. For some reason, he wanted to take Arthur with him.
Arthur insisted that he could not leave because Mr Prosser wanted to knock down his house.
Ford’s first question: “Well, he can do it while you’re away, can’t he?”
When his proposal proved unacceptable to the stubborn Arthur, Ford reached the following conclusions:
- Everyone had accepted that Arthur was going to block the bulldozers.
- If they would just take it as read that nothing was going to get done, they didn’t actually need Arthur to lie down in the mud. Not as such.
- Someone would need to take his place in front of the bulldozers, else there’d be nothing to stop them running straight over Arthur Dent’s house.
Perfectly ridiculous logical flow, but also undeniable in its way. Which is to say, Ford talked Mr Prosser into taking Arthur’s place in the mud so that he and Arthur could slip away to the pub for a half-hour.
Ford also graciously offered to cover for Mr Prosser in return, if he should want to pop off for a quick one later.
They knocked down Arthur’s house anyway, but it didn’t matter a pair of fetid dingo’s kidneys what happened to one cottage on an island that completely and utterly failed to exist 13 minutes later.
Point is, Ford got what he wanted: three pints of bitter, some peanuts, and a lift off this desolate planet with the Vogon constructor fleet.
Humans
Ford Prefect came to Earth for a week. He got stuck here for 15 years.
15 years is a long time to be stuck anywhere, especially somewhere as mindbogglingly dull as Earth.
Ford spent much of his time studying humanity. One of the things he had always found it hardest to understand about humanity was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very obvious.
Being the researcher he is, Ford devised a theory, which was this: if humans don’t keep talking, their mouths must seize up.
After listening to humans talk for a bit longer, Ford revised his theory: if humans don’t keep exercising their lips, their brains start working.
After a while, Ford abandoned his seized-mouth theory as well as being obstructively cynical and decided he quite liked human beings after all, but he always remained desperately worried about the terrible number of things they didn’t know about.
In Conclusion
Know where your towel is.
Look, don’t go looking for meaningful advice in an article about Ford Prefect. But let’s learn a few things anyway, shall we? I think it’d annoy him.
- You might get away with skimping on the initial research, but you’d better be ready to commit to your findings for 15 years.
- Always speak with authority and back yourself with logic. You’d be surprised what you can get away with.
- Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
- People will talk way beyond the point where they actually know what they’re talking about. Always verify your facts.
- When your editor cuts down 15 years of detailed research to two words (“Mostly harmless”), you’ll probably take it personally. Try not to do that.
Finally, you can never go wrong with Ol’ Janx Spirit. After a solid swig, you probably can’t move at all. But that’s a story for another day.
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